Help - my cave is inside-out

Wookey wookey at aleph1.co.uk
Thu Jan 6 03:50:12 CET 2005


+++ Martin Budaj [05-01-05 22:31 +0100]:

>> I'll start with easier problems. The problem in soundriver3_s1 was really
>> tricky. Step by step description:
>>
>> *** uncommented soundrivercrab_s1:
>>
>> I got an MetaPost error "! Paths 6 and 5 don't intersect."
>>
>> It's always related to areas so I used "search & select" in the map area
>> to find all areas. There was only one area (line 6 in File commands).


OK- at this point if I select the area then 3 of the lines surrounding the
area are highlighted, but not the others? Why is this? Is it a clue to the
problem or is the area highlighting just broken?

Being able to click on the lines in the area control and have them
highlighted would make it much quicker to check an area. (at the oment you
have to search for their names, and after the first 3 you need to keep
scrolling the preview window). Someone add this to the wishlist  :-)

>> I
>> looked to Command preview window to see the definition and tried to locate
>> all area border lines in the scrap. There was one line too much
>> (l26-1164-70), which I deleted in Area control.


OK - fixed  :-)

BTW when I view therion-produced pdf files in xpdf I get this a lot:
 Error (181503): Name token too long
 Error (181523): Dictionary key must be a name object

The rendering looks OK so far as I can see, but maybe some element is
missing.

Is this an xpdf problem or something that should be fixed in therion? Do
you need an example file? (this was the soundriver.pdf I sent with the above
fix in)

>> *** uncommented soundriver2_s1:
>>
>> I got an error:
>>
>> -----
>> l_flowstone->...as>dlzka+(mojkrok/3);t1:=t2;endfor


>> The first error line gives the name of symbol


aha - that's useful to know.

fixed.

>> *** uncommented soundriver3_s1:
>>
>> Similar error
>>
>> -----
>> l_arrow->...d(angle(direction.infinity.of(EXPR0))-
>>                                                   90)shifted(point.infinity....
>> l.5728 ),2)
>>            ;
>> The `angle' between two identical points is undefined.
>> I'm zeroing this one. Proceed, with fingers crossed.
>> -----
>>
>> As before I searched for the given symbol (line arrow): search & select
>> line arrow (Find first, Find next, ...) and watched the Command preview
>> window to see the definition. I suspected that problematic is line 24 in
>> the File commands window:
>>   363.0 573.5
>>   363.0 573.5 317.0 604.5 295.0 642.5
>> with the control point of bezier line equal to previous point. After
>> playing a bit with control points and even deleting the line the problem
>> remained.


OK - in fact this line should be a contour not an arrow.

>> I couldn't imagine which arrow casues problems so I had to
>> identify it acoording to the line number given in MP error.
>>

<snip>

>> Unfortunately
>> there is some bug in the arrow definition, which doesn't allow this. I
>> hope it will be possible to fix it. In the meantime you may change the
>> line either to a straight segment (no control points) or add a control
>> point different from the endpoint.


OK thanx - I don't think I'd have worked that out myself in a month!

So I've fixed all that and added some joins between the segments, and that
all works reasonably well, but I have a few small problems remaining:


Line 81 in soundriver.th2 is a pillar, but I can't get it to be empty. There
is an 'outline crosses itself' error in soundriver_pooh which I thought
might be affecting it, but removing that scrap makes no difference, and
neither does reversing the line. Why is this pillar broken?

Also there are a couple of places where there are 'gaps' in the grey
background. The most obvious example is the large chamber in the middle is
soundriver2_s2 (with lots of boulders). The main chamber has a RH wall which
is in the 'middle' of 3 walls. The rightmost wall is the RH wall of a lower
passage, formed by the large pile of rocks in the middle separating the upper
and lower parts for 30m or so. What is the 'therion way' to draw something
like this? Just use a border for the central line? Or split the lower
portion into a very small scrap, I suppose? And there is a similar problem
on the other side of the chamber (where a steep ramp goes up on the left)


BTW - I hope you looked at the scale bar and were impressed with the size of
the passage we found  :-)  All that was found on two pretty amazing trips!

Wookey
--
Aleph One Ltd, Bottisham, CAMBRIDGE, CB5 9BA, UK Tel +44 (0) 1223 811679
work: http://www.aleph1.co.uk/ play: http://www.chaos.org.uk/~wookey/





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